When using Globee as an online merchant accepting Monero into fiat, is it private and safe? over Tor?

Question

I was looking into the privacy implications faced by online merchants selling goods from websites, accepting Monero. I'm not sure whether I want to convert to fiat automatically through Globee or take Monero and change through an exchange myself.

I myself use Windows 10 on a PC, so would need something compatible.

My prime concerns are anonymity and privacy and my website would need to take payments and show confirmations to clients who would be paying via Monero. No other crypto or payment method would be used.

My queries are:

1. Using Globee sounds convenient. Is it safe, I mean by do they log IPs and stuff if they convert to fiat?

2. Is it more private to use the Globee API to make transactions?

3. Is it more private to use the API? And can the API be used to send Monero to a wallet only, or can it be automatically exchanged into fiat first?

4. Does the latest version of the Monero GUI contain Tor support, built-in, as in Whonix or Tails?

5. I was thinking of using the Monero GUI but what is the difference between that and using the monero-wallet-rpc and monerod, is it relevant to me if i take payments from my website?

Cheers!

Answer 1

1. Whether something is "safe" or not is subjective. If you use Globee to handle transactions for you, of course you will be sharing information with them. See their privacy policy for the types of information and how it is handled.

2. Globee is a payments provider. It is designed to make it easier for an online merchant to accept Monero and handle converting to other currencies etc. If you use a third party to handle your payment processing, of course you lose some privacy, as you have to essentially partner with them. If you need your store to have complete anonymity, you will need to develop your own payment processing.

3. It is more private not to use any third parties. See above point.

4. Monero doesn't have Tor "built-in" like Whonix or Tails; Monero is not an operating system. It can run fine on computers that do restrict all traffic through Tor (like Tails or your own computed configured as such). It also has configuration options to allow sending transactions over tor/i2p and sync blocks over clearnet. All of this is covered in the README and ANONYMITY_NETWORKS documents.

5. The Monero GUI is a desktop wallet. The Monero RPC interfaces are for programmatically working with a Monero wallet or daemon. For accepting payments on a website, you more than likely want to make this programatic, thus would code your website to interact with the monero-wallet-rpc. And this is where Globee eases things - it does the heavy lifting - you don't need to run a node or the wallet RPC. You still need some web development skills, but significantly less than doing all your own payments processing.